


Bent

by liluye (mouselini)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Rivalry, emotional incontinence, whump whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:05:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4565712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mouselini/pseuds/liluye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Breaking the things you love most isn't restricted to mages, Fenris."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Tense changes are intentional though the calendar days aren't that important.

(Present~ 17 Kingsway, 9:34 Dragon)

 

It’s around sunrise when Aveline lets herself into the Hawke Estate and escorts Sir Lucius Puddle through the back door to do his morning business. It’s also around sunrise when Hawke flings a pillow off the side of his bed in hysterical defeat, because neither Aveline nor Sir Lucius Puddle know the first thing about being quiet.

She speaks to him with her outside voice the moment she enters the house, _hi buddy!_ s and _who’s the best dog in Thedas?_ s and _Maker’s breath, Luke, what’s this mess?!_ s blaring through the halls like a Chantry bell, usually in that order, three times a fucking week for over two fucking miserable years.

At first the noises startled him. Mother used to sleep right through the racket and would later wake up surprised to see the dog gone; by then Hawke would’ve blundered twice through the house in search of the intruder, half-naked and thoroughly confused, staff searing trails from the bed to his feet.

Three times a fucking week for the better part of one fucking miserable year, tea would start with the question, _“honey, why are your toes bleeding,”_ to which Hawke always replied, “because we have furniture, ma,” and asked for the boat of cream.

Now he’s grown accustomed to the routine, so much that his brain has developed the habit of preserving his sanity by waking him up five minutes before Aveline’s expected time of arrival. Most people are grateful to have a system that offers them a peaceful alternative to coronary shock; Hawke, however, thinks it’s among the worst things to have ever happened to his adult autonomy and spends the first hour of his mornings sentimentalizing the moments of sleep he could have had without it.

Rolling to his stomach, Hawke buries his face under his blanket in a benign attempt to block out the noise, but there’s a knock at the door as soon as his eyelids drop and he ends up groaning into his mattress instead.

“ _Whaaaaaat_?”

The door opens and Luke waddles in with a salutatory huff, followed by a storm of clattering armor that Hawke can only assume is Aveline. He winces as he hears his floors scratch under Mabari claws.

“Hawke, I need to talk to you.”

“Nnnnnnnnfffff....”

Aveline sounds like an amateur swordfight tourney when she paces across the room, metal colliding against metal, her steps as rhythmic as a horse’s trot as they ricochet from Hawke’s bed sheets to his ear drums. “It’s about Fenris.”

Hawke stills. It couldn’t mean what he thinks it means. There’s no way – unless Aveline upgraded her patrol routes without informing him, and that seems unlikely given her recent inability to find the time to eat breakfast.

Maybe Fenris decided to go on an extended “vacation” again, or he started a bar fight with somebody who thought his tattoos were an invitation to be touched. Maybe he got wasted and was found in a pool of his own blood somewhere in the Red Lantern district, fucked well and robbed clean by a moderately attractive whore, and Aveline took it upon herself to inform Hawke that he’s in critical but miraculously stable condition.

Maybe. Probably not.

With the image burned hopefully in the cusp of his eyelids, Hawke slowly turns over, props his head up with a strong hand and through a yawn mumbles “what about’m?”  
She crosses her arms, leans against the wall like a mother waiting for her child to put down his toys and come to dinner.

“You’re an idiot.”

\--

Hawke’s friends worry about him. They worry about how much food is left on his plate, how long he waits before writing a statement to Gamlen, how free his carpet is of paw prints and bloodstains and how quick he is to run to the Hanged Man when he’s left alone.

Because of them, Hawke makes sure to crinkle his eyes whenever he tries to smile.

They all worry over different things the same way, always hiding under excuses and pretending that his wellbeing is merely concomitant to their daily routine. Merrill does it best. She often brings leftovers, sometimes dropping them off with a quick peck to his cheek, other times going through entirely too much trouble to disguise her mashed potatoes as a “special delivery to be eaten immediately, from a true friend, and no worries I didn’t poison it.” Hawke tries to eat it all because he can’t stand to see her kindness go to waste.

Isabela is cute enough to hand him a key to her room whenever she sees him. He doesn’t accept it, but he flirts with her almost as much as she wants him to and she usually leaves his house in a fit of giggles. Her laugh is nice. It was the biggest thing he missed about her when she’d disappeared. Hawke suspects that she has a lot to do with all the half-finished whiskey bottles he keeps finding around his house, so he makes a point to thank her for returning every time he takes a shot.

Aveline and Anders were probably separated at birth. They both come over and make too much noise doing absolutely nothing at all, and they both have this strange passive-aggressive way of asking how much water he’s consumed over the last week. Hawke wouldn’t be surprised if they formed a blood pact to spy on him in shifts, either, because they developed this uncanny ability to smell his bullshit from cities away, and Varric—

Varric knows him well enough to leave him the hell alone, so when he sees Hawke at the tavern with his head cradled deep into the nook of his elbow, he pours the rest of his beer into Hawke’s empty mug and makes his way to his room without saying a word.

Hawke lets out a sigh of relief as his eyes follow the dwarf’s retreating feet through the opening in the bend of his arm. He waits until he hears a door shut before he drains his glass in one long swig, tipping his head so far back that he almost plummets down from his stool. The bartender looks at him funny then, so he forces a cheeky grin, makes a joke about sex or the Qun or sex with the Qun and asks for another round because he’s buying.

“Alright, but I’m closin’, this is yer last’n.”

“Gotcha.”

The ale he gets is the bottom of the barrel and it goes down leaving splinters in his throat. Somewhere in the corner of the bar he catches the movement of a mouse and chalks it up to Anders, the girl in armor who’s been throwing him _eyes_ all night to one of Aveline’s. He smirks at her when she blushes and half-considers asking if she wants to get a room, but he settles for a wobbly wave and leaves too much gold on the counter when he stands.

The night is exceptionally chilly; it’s a welcome change to the blistering weather of the last couple of months, when everybody suffered from heat-induced sociopathy and severe dehydration and constantly tried to kill each other because they thought the Maker needed human sacrifices to let the cold winds blow.

The fire from the Qun probably didn’t help, either.

Everyone talks poorly about Fereldan weather, but Kirkwall has always smelled like _shit_ in the summer. It’s muggy, and hot, and most people stop cleaning after their animals and their children and themselves so each street carries its own particular brand of musk: mildewed dog for Hawke, boiled cabbage for Merrill, spoiled milk for the Chantry. The docks reek of open mollusk (clam, for Isabela) and the nonexistent breeze leaves the water to boil under a thick layer of its own petrified algae.

Honestly, autumn’s a blessing that nobody realizes they desperately need until it comes, and tonight is an autumn night.

Hawke inhales loudly, drunk as the night is long, and stumbles over a broken laugh as his boots make too much noise in the alley. He leans against the wall of a house and doesn’t stop to check what part of his tunic rips on the stone, just remembers that he leaned against this house months ago when he followed pools of his mother’s blood. He laughs louder, but it comes out sounding like a fragile cough.

Ever since he was a child he knew that something was bound to break. Nobody could be that happy. Nobody could steal apples from the Chantry orchard every week and expect to never fall off a tree. It might have been Malcolm’s doing, but Hawke found himself adopting an air of cynicism at an early age to disguise his growing fears--

It was always “Garrett, be careful walking home tonight,” “Garrett, make sure she doesn’t leave your sight,” “you kids can’t go outside right now,” “the neighbor’s boy was taken last night,” “Rory hanged himself,” “Stay.” Eventually there came a point where Hawke decided that he hated himself more than anything, and by the time he was fourteen-years-old he mastered the art of crafting smiles so the rest of the world wouldn’t ask questions.

Still, his family life was pretty like a portrait. Hawke may have loathed himself and the fire he could summon with a mere flick of his wrist, but it didn’t matter as long as he could make the people who loved him laugh.

When the Blight came and Malcolm fell to the horde, when Hawke had to swing his baby sister over his shoulder to get her out of Lothering because all she did was scream _daddy!_ into the flames that were once her home, he thought he’d finally seen it break.

But then she died, too. The smarmy little opinionated brat. The staff-waving ball of sunshine with spittle on her chin who froze her blanket when she was two and dated that useless sack of shit (Dolan? Dylan?) when she was fifteen – the girl who beat up the boy who beat up Carver before Hawke even found out about it – Bethany _died_.

That was the moment Hawke knew that it was never going to be over, that falling didn’t lead to standing up, that one by one the people who loved him would leave him and never come back.

Carver left. Mother left. Fenris fucking left, even if he didn’t leave for good.

He kicks a rock down the street with misplaced force, then chases after it, trips, kicks it again. He misses on the third time and loses interest, veers a sharp left toward his house, his boots still echoing in guilty contrast to the lull of the city.

Hawke slows down as the image of his street grows clear enough to see someone crouching on his staircase. There’s a tug in his chest, the kind that happens when someone breathes in too much water after falling overboard a ship during a raging storm. The lantern at his door is out but he doesn’t need it to know exactly who it is; he chokes out a laugh, balls his fists and softly rasps:

“Yeah?”

\--

Fenris comes over sometimes. He doesn’t do it often, maybe a few times a season, always at night and never more than once in two consecutive weeks. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he locks himself up in his room for a month and refuses to leave for anything at all.

It was worrisome at first. Oddly enough, it seemed to bother Merrill the most:

 

“ _Why_ do you think he does that?” She asked, pouting around her glass of water with her eyes shining wide and sad like the lanterns above their table. “It can’t be good for him.”

Anders would roll his eyes halfway across Thedas while Isabela scrunched her nose like a rabbit, and Varric would grumble something along the lines of “don’t worry about it, Daisy, it’s just something he does” until a heavy silence fell on them all like dirt.

_“Oh. But I only just wanted everybody to have a nice time…”_

 

That part ended eventually. Fenris’s occasional disappearing act stopped occupying the majority of their bar gossip. Merrill spilled at least two glasses of ale on herself every week, Isabela got her rent paid by batting her eyes just the right way (it was incredible), Varric polished Bianca like he polished his necklace and his stories.

Sometimes Fenris would be there and Hawke would pay too much attention to his cards, unsure if he wanted to be thrilled or nauseous at the familiar scent of his elf who’d sit in the chair next to his. Other times Fenris would be there and Hawke wouldn’t give a _flying fuck_ ; he’d make Fenris laugh so hard that he’d take one too many sips of brandy and lay his head against Hawke’s bicep until they were forced to leave the bar. Hawke made a point to walk him home those nights. He even carried him, wobbly and unreasonably alert, all the way to his mansion on the rare occasion that Fenris was too lit to stand.

Then Fenris would stop coming out for a couple of weeks. Again. Merrill would spill her drinks, Isabela would adjust her pout, Hawke would throw down his shitty hand of cards in silent acknowledgment that this was it, that he was alone, that Fenris was finally gone for good.

He never was. Whenever Hawke would toss his staff to the floor in favor of a bottle of wine or recede into the colorless tides of Kirkwall with little more than a drunken cackle, he’d stumble home on a trail of self-deprecation and Fenris would be there biting his fingers raw.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tense change intentional

(22 Drakonis, 9:34 Dragon)

 

“Are you fucking him?”

The question caught Hawke so off-guard that he accidentally inhaled the spoonful of Merrill’s day-old rice that he’d been chewing. “Wh--? What?” he coughed, ramming his fist into his chest to clear it up. Varric folded his arms and leaned back in his seat.

“Are you fuckin’m?”

Hawke knitted his eyebrows and tilted his head like Lucius Puddle did when he lost sight of the rabbit he’d been chasing. “Fucking who? Fenris?”

“No. No, Divine _Beatrix_. I hear she holds the key to every apostate’s heart.”

“She does! Keeps it right between her thighs, the screwy bat,” Hawke speared a piece of chicken with a chuckle, “it’s as pink as her Chantry gown.” After a moment his smile faded. “…I’m not fucking Fenris.”

Varric’s head quirked in mild surprise, but he didn’t say anything as he placed his bottle of whiskey down onto the table. Hawke could feel him glaring holes through the air while he traced a trail through his rice with his fork. “Varric, I’m _not_.”

“So you’re telling me that he comes over on a regular basis – at night – and you haven’t dipped your wick once.”

“Not since the one time, no. I don’t want to talk about this.”

Varric put his hands up. “Have it your way,” he said, then opened the bottle and took another swig.

Hawke frowned down at Merrill’s leftovers. Thinking about Fenris always made his appetite swallow itself, so when he decided that the letters G-A-R-R were the only ones he could fit in his stew, he dropped his fork and laid his head in his palm.

“How did you know he comes over?” he asked, slightly annoyed.

“Hm?”

“Fenris.”

Varric shrugged and slid him the bottle, nodding when Hawke grumbled his thanks. “A little birdy told me. Frankly, I’m hurt that that little birdy wasn’t you.”

“Sorry. Which little birdy is this?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Varric chided. “What matters is that you’re one spell away from becoming a wisp and it’d be nice if I could tell people why.”

Hawke winced at that. “Uhn, I don’t know, my entire family _died_. Make something up. Something fun.”

“I tried and it didn’t work.” Varric’s eyes followed Hawke’s hands as they absently lifted the bottle to his mouth. “Look, you know that I’m here to listen if you need to talk. Your mother’s been buried—hey, it’s true even if it hurts—your mother’s been buried for almost seven months and every passing day leaves you looking shittier than the last. The Hawke I know doesn’t just dwell on the dead like that.”

“Yeah, well, my whole family doesn’t just die like that.” There was a brief moment of stillness punctuated only by the clinking of glass against Hawke’s teeth before he leaned forward and muttered, “it’s not exactly regular.”

“What’s not regular?”

Hawke shrugged, sighed, fixed his gaze upon a splinter in the table as he slowly tried to piece together an explanation: “Fenris… doesn’t come over. Regularly. On a regular basis.”

Varric nodded. There was a strange glint in his eye then, which led Hawke to believe that he might have known every answer he was digging for. “Mind if I ask what basis he’s actually on?”

“Fuck, if I know. He hasn’t come by in nearly a month. Before that it was little more than a week.”

“You’re counting!” Varric laughed, scratching the back of his neck with his thumb and squinting an eye in playful skepticism. “Are you sure you’re not fucking him?”

Hawke groaned. “What difference would it make—I may hav—I don’t know—” he wrung his hands together as an anxious wave of heat beat up to his cheeks, “I sleep in the other room, usually. We made out a few times but I don’t let it get anywhere.”

“Ohh, you’re letting it get _everywhere_.”

“Mm. Dirty.”

Varric snorted, but his face straightened quicky. “He’s leading you around on a leash, Hawke. I don’t get why you don’t just tell him to take a long walk off a short dock.”

“Because I don’t mind him coming—”

“Ohhhh, you don’t, huh?” cackled Varric, which made Hawke squeeze his eyes shut and crinkle his nose through a lopsided grin.

“I’m _serious_.”

Varric wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, I am too. We’re all worried shitless about you.”

Hawke knitted his eyebrows together and folded his arms across his chest as he leaned back in his chair. “Exactly how many little birdies know about this, Varric?”

“Nobody we know, don’t worry. I was at the morning market yesterday and heard a couple’a nobles talk about your slaves. Now you don’t _have_ any slaves, so naturally I asked what they looked like so I could perpetuate the myth. ‘Weird tattoos and a big frown’ really shortens the list.”

“Yeah?” Hawke laughed. “That’s great. And what about Orana? Maker, what about fucking _Merrill_? She comes to my house every three days with a broom and two pots of food! She looks more like a slave than actual slaves!”

“Nope, they were really insistent on that frown. Apparently your ‘slave’ makes a racket when he locks himself out at night.” Varric waved the bottle around to aerate the wine before taking another sip. “It’s simple math: Broody comes over late, Hawke’s neighbors think he’s the neighborhood pariah, Varric thinks Hawke’s getting his prick wet with the one person who brings out the worst in him all the time.”

“Right! Except I haven’t slept with him since the night I slept with him.”

“You’re letting him into your house, Hawke.”

Hawke shrugged as a dull headache started to form behind his eyes. “I let you into my house, too.”

“But _I_ don’t make you hate you,” Varric retorted sharply. He sighed and remorsefully shook his head when Hawke crossed his arms. “Sorry. This shit’s just too familiar.”

“Is it?”

Everything Hawke told him was true. He hadn’t “dipped his wick” with Fenris or anybody else since the day after they found Hadriana. Fenris came over, they talked, maybe shared wine. They argued a lot too, about really petty bullshit like why “ph” sounded like “f” or where you go when you die or why “mages really ought to have freedoms, Fenris, I’m surprised you aren’t more adamant on basic civil rights after spending the better part of your life as a slave.”

Fenris got incredibly drunk once and split his hand open while trying to teach Hawke how to block with a sword. It took three rolls of vellum to heal the wound – one to find the right spell, the other two to act as makeshift bandages while Hawke looked for it. At one point Hawke had to ask Fenris to close his eyes because the way he shook at the sight of a staff gnawed the shit out of his heart. Fenris let him hold him that night, and he fell asleep to the certain scent of mulling spice that clung to his snowy hair.

Hawke occasionally tried to teach him how to read but his visits were so sporadic that he never had time to pick out an appropriate book. He eventually got Fenris to write his own name (and had to patiently explain why it wasn’t spelled “Phenris”, which led to a choir of slammed doors and an infuriating migraine).

One night, about a month after the funeral, Fenris surprised him by writing “Garrett” on a vial of lyrium and hanging it over the fireplace like one would a masterpiece by an esteemed landscape artist. When Hawke saw it he immediately broke into laughter; it was the first time he even cracked a smile since Leandra died. He was so overcome with relief that he automatically wrapped his arm around Fenris’s shoulders and drew him in to a hug.

Fenris had stilled. Then he lifted his bare, tattooed hands and guided Hawke’s head down to him until he was sucking the breath out from between his lips.

“Hawke!”

“ _What?_ ”

“Can I be worried about you? Am I allowed to do that?” Varric’s voice sounded far away, and when Hawke snapped his head up to look at him he saw that he was standing by the door with Bianca strapped tightly to his back.

“Yeah, sure, but there’s really nothing to worry ab—”

“Don’t feed me shit, I eat better than that. You drink as much as I do. You’ve got a man that you’re in love with showing up at your doorstep and you don’t even know if you want him there. Andraste’s sweet Dwarven-crafted tits, Hawke, your belt’s getting too loose. It’s a good thing you’re incapable of losing muscle mass or else you would have been checked into the clinic ages ago.

“Now I know that Aveline and all them are up your ass trying to make living a bearable experience for you, but I actually trust you not to accidentally kill yourself. No offense, but you’re kind of an idiot when it comes to this shit so I’m just going to make this as clear as I possibly can: do whatever makes you happy but be careful about it. Please? For my sake? I’m sick of writing tragedies, especially for the people I care about.”

Varric’s head dropped and he turned to leave, but as his hand found the door handle he paused, glanced over his shoulder and mumbled, “you thought the Deep Roads were rough? Try walking down this one.”

For a second Hawke thought he saw Varric’s fingers tighten protectively around Bianca when he said it.

\--

 

Hawke used to pride himself for how well he could take an arrow to the head, but as he grew up the fears that collected throughout his childhood—nightmares of Templars throwing themselves onto his sister or turning him Tranquil because he used the wrong spell on the wrong person—began to overshadow him.

The three Hawke children were assigned unspoken roles since the day they were born. Leandra said that her eldest son displayed signs of magic before he even left her womb (“Maker’s breath, some days I felt like my stomach was melting, other days I’d spit out clouds of snow!”), but the twins were an unfortunate surprise. Bethany didn’t give any signs of being entirely her father’s daughter until she was almost old enough to walk -- they waited years before they were sure that Carver, at least, was safe.

At six-years-old, Hawke was silently dubbed responsible for the wellbeing of his infant siblings. Malcolm taught him how to hide in plain sight and use his whip-like wit to coerce people into believing most anything he says – a gift that teenage Hawke, to Leandra’s dismay, used exclusively for sarcasm and charming his way into the intimate wardrobes of giggling girls. And two boys.

Malcolm spent most of his time with his daughter, believing that she was elflike in her frailty and wouldn’t stand a chance against even the smallest Templar. He clearly never met anyone like Fenris. To be fair, neither had Hawke.

Hawke was never quite convinced that Bethany knew what she was doing with a staff, but he knew to take his mother seriously when she’d say that she knew how to flick a dagger through the jugular of a man twice her size. With her eyes closed, ehh maybe not, but she sliced pumpkins like a champ, and as long as Malcolm was around to control the intensity of the oven’s fire her pastries would come out like champs too.

Hawke had only ever gotten the belt once, when Bethany disappeared under his watch to play with a few neighborhood kids before dinner. She’d just gone next door but Malcolm, terrified that his little girl had been kidnapped by monsters, didn’t listen to what his son had to say. “Where’s my daughter,” “I told you not to go outside,” “you’re not like the other kids,” “you’re going to get us killed”. _Crack_. That was around the time Hawke stopped using the word “father” and started looking at the magic in his blood with disdain.

Try as he might, the lightning wouldn’t leave. The fire wouldn’t still, the ice wouldn’t thaw, the magic wouldn’t bleed out. He learned to laugh through gritting teeth.

\--

 

Fenris carries the scent of mulled mead.

In order to make mulled mead, water must first be brought to a boil over an enclosed fire. When it reaches a rolling simmer, the pot is removed from the heat and honey is stirred in until dissolved. The pot is then added back to the hearth and the foamy residue that inevitably rises is skimmed off the top until the mixture lies flat and translucent.

The ratio of water to honey depends on the brewer’s personal taste: Hawke’s father used to use four parts water for every one part honey, which resulted in a rather sweet batch that quickly attracted fruit flies and all of Leandra’s young children.

Hawke made mulled mead once after the twins convinced him that they’d be a grand riot under the influence of some alcohol, and though he offered them a secret swig of his secret ale, there was something mischievously appealing about using a precious family recipe to go against their mother’s deepest wishes.

He practically converted their shared bedroom into a distillery, sneaking his siblings along with vats of honey through the window because he’d sealed their door shut with basic magic. It was a weekend in which Malcolm was away, so when Leandra asked why the hell she wasn’t able to get into their closet to collect their dirty pants, Bethany simply pulled her _eyes_ and said that locks were just really important to her privacy and that she’d “greatly appreciate it if the matter was dropped, mother, thank you very much.” She was thirteen.

Hawke ended up burning half the batch because he’d failed to remember that honey caramelizes at the bottom of the pot when it isn’t stirred properly. Had he not been a mage, all of Lothering would have succumbed to flames in a heartbeat.

The mead turned out terribly bitter and smokier than the stale end of Old Sodder’s pipe, so Hawke had the brilliant idea to mask it all with an assortment of seasonal spices until it was decent enough to drink. He called it “Eau d’Orlais”, and though it smelled great, it tasted like a cross between earthy bathwater and old pumpkin pie. Bethany had to hold her nose every time she tipped back a mug so she wouldn’t immediately vomit it all back up.

It took approximately forty-five minutes for the three hatchlings to finish two gallons of mulled mead while sitting perched atop the roof of their Lothering home. They aimed sunflower seeds at the heads of passing chickens and Chantry sisters, summoned hordes of leaves for Carver’s target practice, and were only discovered after they orchestrated a gymnastics floor routine right above the kitchen where their mother was apparently preparing dinner. As it turned out, the twins absolutely were a grand riot under the influence of some alcohol. Leandra, however, was not.

Hawke had recognized the scent of Eau d’Orlais immediately after Fenris came around that dark corner in Lowtown several years ago. It was so subtle it could have easily been mistaken for the ripened bark of a tree, so naturally Hawke assumed that it _was_ the ripened bark of a tree, or at least someone in the alienage making the most of what little they had. He soon learned that it was actually Fenris.

He also learned that Fenris doesn’t drink mead, nor was he ever around anybody who made it in his life.

In the midst of a heated argument over why Tevinter mages aren’t Fereldan mages, or why city elves aren’t actually privileged just because they live in the alienage, or why Hawke feels the need to constantly deflect serious conversations with petty humor (“I don’t know, Fenris, maybe because you said you want everyone like me to die an agonizing death? As if I don’t already hate myself enough?”) – in the middle of their verbal attacks, physical attacks, manipulative cold shoulders, puppy eyes, nails and sharpened teeth – Eau d’Orlais would drift in the space between them and lull Hawke into nostalgic comfort, and he’d forget what made him angry enough to punch cracks into his wall in the first place.

Burned honey with too many cloves might’ve been why Hawke found it easy to offer his heart to a man who never hesitated to rip it out himself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so while I personally don't consider this to be dub-con, I can absolutely see how others would. Please proceed with caution if dub-con is something that really bothers you regardless of context.

(Present~)

“Yeah?”

The word hangs in the air like summer rain, caustic, disbelieving, cold, unsure whether it should even be there. Hawke slowly climbs the stairs with drunk-calculated steps, gripping the railing tight enough to turn his knuckles white before he freezes in the line of Fenris’s gaze.

His breath hitches when his elf looks up at him, bleary and wide-eyed with worry, almost startled like he wasn’t expecting Hawke to come home. Because it’s late, or maybe because of the ale, Hawke thinks he’s beautiful and wishes he could swim in the fragile shade of green that always seems to drown him in his sleep.

Fenris stares at him with fervor. His chest rises and falls in a quickening pace that crumbles Hawke’s resolve and makes his throat constrict until it’s too hard to swallow. The way Fenris keeps his knees up when he sits makes him look so much smaller than usual, and though his eyes are dark Hawke can see in them a suffocating riptide of vulnerability tumbling fast toward him.

Hawke ascends the rest of the steps. He carefully slides his fingers over Fenris’s knees and they part without hesitation. Somewhere in the distance a tree rustles with the gust of an eerie wind, a dog barks, a boy shouts, but Hawke doesn’t care; he crashes into the space Fenris makes between his legs and, slow and shivering, slides his tongue into his mouth while his heart sinks in his chest like a stone.

This is the first time Hawke's initiated anything since the night Fenris came over to apologize for the Hadriana incident. It comes in a slow panic for both of them, doused in shades of fire and too much alcohol; yes, Hawke thinks, splitting his lips and drinking the breaths between them, Fenris always loved him most when he's had his drinks.

Fenris grapples at him like he grapples for his sword when he’s cornered and can’t get his lyrium to work right, tangling his fingers through Hawke’s hair and pulling him until his tongue melts deep enough that Hawke can’t remember what it’s like to breathe without him. Fenris shudders desperately into the kiss, and for a second Hawke is worried, thinks Fenris isn’t well, thinks he feels too much like a fever beneath him, so he breaks away and trails quiet sighs down the side of his neck.

“H-hey—look at me—” Hawke’s hoarse voice wavers in the space between their faces as he presses their foreheads together, gently tilting Fenris’s chin toward him with the sides of his fingers. “Fenris, _look at me_.”

With a shake of his head, Fenris pulls Hawke back down and whimpers into his mouth in a way that makes his pulse flutter like hell. Hawke parts his lips for him again, sucks softly at his tongue and wraps his arms around the entirety of his back because he’s drunk enough to care how hard he’s arching over the jagged steps.

Fenris comes over sometimes. He doesn't do it often, but he comes in the night like a thief for reasons too sad for words, bringing his snow-pale company under the light of lanterns to Hawke's vacant doorstep, and Hawke always lets him in with his head bowed, warning bells chiming in his stomach, hand outstretched, eyes crinkled just enough to lie.

When Fenris folds his legs around his hips to better position himself, Hawke moans and automatically thrusts against the hard edges he feels beneath him, driving Fenris back until his neck is exposed and his fingertips tumble down Hawke's abdomen.

Hawke yelps and jolts back. Fenris sits up panting, eyes wild and moderately confused – his parted lips look purple in the moonlight.

“Inside,” Hawke rasps, darting a glance over his shoulder, his skin crawling with the taint of the sea breeze as he tries to distract himself from the hardness in his pants, from the elf laying spread out on his porch, “it’s warm inside, y-you like warm, right?”

Hawke drags Fenris up to his feet and slides an arm around his shoulders, mumbling _Maker’s breath_ when he can’t get his key to align with the lock. When the door finally cracks open, he guides his elf into the main room with a restless grip on the crook of his neck, but doesn’t notice the ice unintentionally collecting at his fingertips until Fenris shivers beneath him.

“Shit, sorry,” Hawke mutters as he releases his hold. He’s about to make a joke about spoiling everything with magic’s touch but Fenris turns on his heel and pulls him down by the back of his head.

Fenris gets in these moods where all he wants to do is kiss and touch. It drives Hawke mad. They’d make out on Hawke’s kitchen table, against his washroom sink, on the floor, in his bed... When Fenris would get crazed enough to drag his nails up beneath Hawke’s tunic or roll his hips against him in the middle of a moan, Hawke’s instinct would kick in and he’d push him off before they did something they’d both regret. Fenris would always ask _why the fuck_ , but Hawke responded by retreating to the spare bedroom and cursing himself behind a locked door for the remainder of the night.

It’s happened six times in eleven months. Varric was right. He’s been counting.

Breathless, Hawke pulls away and ignites the lantern in his kitchen. “Thirsty?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for Fenris to reply before he hands him a mug of whiskey.

Fenris’s laugh is the only thing in the world that makes Hawke want to beg. “Water would have done just fine,” Fenris says through a smile, coughing at the aftertaste before he drains the rest.

Hawke feigns offence. “Are you _complaining_?”

“About your taste in bottom-shelf swill? I would never.” Fenris reaches out and shakes his empty mug at Hawke, who lifts his eyebrows and refills it with a shitty grin on his face.

He watches Fenris finish his second mug of whiskey and laughs when the elf expectantly clears his throat for a third. Hawke fills the cup only halfway this time, telling him, “pace yourself, we don't need you getting sick all over my writing desk again.”

Fenris shoots him a stern glance and sets his mug down on the kitchen table, wiping the remnants of booze from his lips as he backs Hawke into the nearest wall. Hawke freezes, mouth tightening into a determined line against Fenris's. Fenris pulls back enough for Hawke to lower his head down to the tip of his ear, kissing it softly as he whispers,

“Wanna grab that bottle of wine behind you?”

 

 

_CRASH!_

“What was that?” asks Fenris, voice charming in its drunken crackle, but Hawke is already glowering up at his bedroom window.

“Who, more like,” he says, wistful, frowning.

“What?”

“ _Who_. Who is the right question.”

Fenris sighs. It’s an annoyed sound that sends Lucius Puddle into a hazy growl. “ _Who_ was it, then?”

The blinds shut with a snap and Hawke storms back over to the fire. “Aveline,” he groans, “Aveline or Anders, or somebody they both hired by accident. No, it has to be Aveline, mice don’t make that much noise when they trip into my yard. She figured it out, by the way—”

Fenris, who’s had his head in his hands since he’d sat down on the winged chair that Hawke had dragged to the middle of the room, glances up at him with his eyebrows knit in a pathetic display of false confusion.

“Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” he asks, which makes Hawke want to hit him, so he distracts himself by sniffing around his desk for the bottle of wine he could have sworn they’d brought upstairs. Lucius Puddle follows him, also sniffing, but pauses instead at the heel of Fenris’s boot.

Fenris moves his foot in attempt to shoo Lucius Puddle away, but the dog simply squints, opens his mouth, and yanks the newly-open bottle of wine right out of Fenris’s hand. A smile springs to Hawke’s face; the sirens in his stomach stop him from putting genuine emotion into it, but Lucius Puddle wags his tail all the same.

“My beautiful finder! Steaks for you all week,” Hawke plants an exaggerated kiss to the top of his dog’s head before taking a swig.

Fenris watches him through a loose strip of hair. His lip quirks before he says, “What did she figure out?”

“Your little visits, Fenris. Maker's _balls_ what an ugly conversation that was.”

“My visits?” Fenris turns his eyes into angry slits. “What about my visits?”

“Oh, just that they’re seemingly unwarranted. I tried to tell her that I actually don’t mind you coming by, it’s _Varric_ I want g—”

“What’s seemingly unwanted about my visits?”

The biggest problem with Fenris, Hawke thinks, is his inability to see the river for the water. “Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Am I prohibited to leave my house?”

“No b—”

“Do I not possess the freedom to decide where I go? What business is it of hers, or the fucking _mage_ , what I do with my time?”

Hawke rolls his eyes. The bottle, now corked, rolls across the floor. “Can you calm down? I don’t know what you think is happening, but I can assure you it’s not.”

“ _No, of course it’s not happening!_ ” He spits in that awful way that he does, right before he swings his sword or locks the door or bolts out of the Holding Caves with a live heart clutched tightly in his fists. He jumps up from the chair and storms across the room, stabbing accusations into Hawke’s eyes with his glare, lyrium brightening in erratic pulses that ricochet off the walls. “You open the door for me! You’re the one who lets me inside! Never once have you asked me to leave, never once have you—”

Hawke ducks and catches the last word between his teeth, backing Fenris into the middle of the room, staggering when the elf’s nails rake down his spine hard enough to leave a mark through his tunic. Fenris’s lips are hot but his bones melt against Hawke like ice, and Hawke mistakes the taste of wine for something more because the flames around him feel like they’re finally starting to wane.

Fenris thrusts his tongue into his mouth with quiet noises that claw through Hawke’s chest, stealing his breath until he’s convinced he’s choking on his own blood. Without thinking, he tears Fenris’s shirt over his head and bites deep into his shoulder, gasping into the lyrium beneath his teeth, curling his fingers into the curve of Fenris’s painfully small waist like he’s the reason why the world’s still standing.

Nothing could have prepared Hawke for Fenris. All of his fear, his apathy, loss, the sea, summer, Blight or Eau d’Orlais, none of it could have mattered enough. And Fenris knows it, too. He knows it. It leaks through everything he does, the way he snaps at Hawke at the docks, the way he laughs through his fingers at the bar, the way he’s currently whimpering as he wraps his silken lips around Hawke’s tongue and his legs around Hawke’s waist.

Hawke holds Fenris up by the underside of his thighs and sways for a moment before he manages to get them onto the floor, rolling Fenris onto his back and leaving blind bite marks across his collarbone, each one morphing into a rolling, purple sea across his quivering chest. Fenris's hands are everywhere on him. Hawke's sure they're leaving marks of their own.

He uses his teeth to claim Fenris's mouth again, pulling him up into his lap as he locks his arms around his back.

Fenris holds Hawke's jaw with both of his hands and kisses him until he bruises, straddling his hips tightly between his legs, his clothed erection straining thick and hot against Hawke’s. When the elf pulls back, he leans his forehead against Hawke’s and pants, “What did Aveline have to say?”

Hawke tilts his jaw to press his lips to Fenris's wrist before burying his face against Fenris's neck. He presses Fenris tighter to him and inhales until he thinks he can speak again, muttering “nothing, nothing” against the warmth of his tattooed skin. The roughness of his own voice startles him.

Hawke places a breathless kiss to the space where Fenris’s jaw meets his ear before he lays back onto the floor, folds his hands over his chest, and gazes up at the beautiful elf sitting weightless atop his thighs. Though the fire crackles warm and bright, a chill chases Fenris’s fingers up Hawke's arms.

“Tell me,” Fenris breathes, eyes shining down at Hawke in the dim light, heavily lidded and screaming sex. Hawke watches the glow of lyrium on his chest as it pulses slightly in time with his heartbeat. He reaches out and runs his thumb down a white line, throat constricting at how much it lights up beneath his touch.

“She didn’t really say anything, Fenris,” he says softly, sadly, splaying his hand over the elf’s bare skin, eliciting a heated sigh. “She just kept telling me that I hate you,” he links his fingers through Fenris’s belt and hisses through clenching teeth when his hips slowly begin to roll, “like h— _ahh, fuckkk_ —l-like hate and love are different things—”

Fenris leans forward and to meet his mouth again, but there’s a certain weight in the way he drags his tongue across Hawke’s that makes the floor beneath them crumble. Hawke can feel himself begin to break, but he opens his mouth wider and lets Fenris slide his hands up his shirt until it’s off, and when Fenris’s fingers flutter down to the fastening of his pants his protests are smothered by the pounding of his heart.

Hawke chokes back a whine when Fenris fists him out, a stream of precome already leaking down across the elf’s tensing knuckles, “Fenris—” he rasps, hands caught in a wild flex, his cock throbbing violently in the loose hold as he tries not to fuck into his fist.

“Fenris, don't do it to me... oh _shit_ ”

Fenris tightens his grip and flicks his thumb over Hawke’s swollen tip, whipping his slicked hand down the whole of Hawke’s length, pupils steadily dilating as Hawke twists and convulses beneath his touch. Fenris’s eyes are clouded and Hawke shivers when he meets his gaze, but the terror and anger fall to arousal and Hawke digs his nails into Fenris’s wrists, jerks him forward until he’s rutting up hard against the pulsing outline of Fenris’s shaft.

The gasp that cuts through the room sounds like Hawke’s name and Fenris collapses down on him, nails slicing a path between Hawke’s lips as he fiercely thrusts against him, the leather between them filthy wet with Hawke’s precome. Hawke bites and sucks at Fenris’s fingers, tasting salt and the sea between harrowing pants, gasping when they’re replaced by Fenris’s wanting tongue, when his cock scrapes raw against the iron buckle of his belt—

“Hawke, H-hawke” Fenris moans into him, gripping Hawke’s hair, pulling, sucking, riding him through the folds in the fabric, “so hard—fuck, I want to feel it in me—”

Hawke grabs the back of his neck and turns them over, pushing his own pants completely off as he sinks in a flurry between Fenris’s legs. He wrenches his eyes closed and dry fucks him with blinding urgency, growling “get this shit off” as he tears at Fenris’s clothes, thinking for a moment that he knows better than this as he viciously sucks welts into Fenris’s skin.

Fenris wraps his arms around his neck and holds him like he can’t get close enough, driving his swollen length up against Hawke’s abdomen, raising his knees until Hawke’s pulsing cock slits wet between his legs.

Hawke buries his face against Fenris’s shoulder as he moves, cradled, panicked, his lips parted just enough to taste the heat of Fenris’s arousal clinging to the curve of his collarbone. Sweat stings Hawke's eyes, forcing them shut as his cock slides up and down Fenris's tight crevice— he lurches when it catches at Fenris’s opening, and with shaking hands he spreads him, slowing his thrusts to careful strokes as he tries to push in.

A sharp hiss tears between them; Hawke shakes his head with a scared laugh and quickly pulls out, flushed and panting and licking desperately at the seam of Fenris’s lips with his cock so hard it hurts. 

Hawke tries to get off, but beneath him Fenris draws his knees higher. He tightens his arms around Hawke’s neck so hard that Hawke has to fight for air between careful, stumbling kisses to familiar tattoos. Hawke shakes his head again through another terrified, pleading laugh but he can’t stop himself from clawing into Fenris’s thighs, from writhing as his cock throbs thick at Fenris’s entrance, from quietly gasping “ _baby you’re so fucking tight_ ” as he barely slides it in.

“ _Unnnh_ A-Amatus please– come on—”

Hawke falters, a river of emotion bleeding through him at the tenuousness of Fenris’s voice, the hollow endearment drifting toward him like a sinking raft just shy of shore. Another tug in his chest. Another wave. Instead of breathing, Hawke cups his elf’s face in both his hands and gently brushes his thumbs along Fenris’s lips until they part. He slowly pushes into him as he dives his tongue into his mouth, swallowing Fenris’s building breaths the same way one swallows water when they drown.

Fenris clings to him desperately, coils his nails through his hair in a way that makes Hawke think he’s hurting him, but Fenris doesn’t let him pull away, doesn’t let him pull out. With a sharp groan Hawke tries to get in deeper but he can’t fit, he’s shaking and covered in precome and Fenris isn’t taking it any more than the tip.

His jaw drops open and his fingers bruise into Fenris’s skin as he fucks him in erratic tremors, his whole body on edge, suffocating in Fenris’s frantic hold.

“Shit—it’s too much—I-I’m—”

Hawke’s fingers tangle through Fenris’s hair as his orgasm rips holes through him.

Fragile moments pass and Fenris still doesn’t let go of him, so Hawke nuzzles against his sweat-doused neck, lets his fingers linger sweetly at his jaw as he tries to catch his breath. When he moves to pull out, Fenris tightens his legs around his waist.

Ice claws up Hawke's spine. “Don’t do this,” he warns quietly into his elf’s damp hair, “don’t do it,” He kisses Fenris’s neck, his jaw, and moves to sit up, but Fenris brushes his fingers across his shoulder blades and whispers, “No, stay,” and of course Hawke does.

 _Stop it,_ the bells chime, _stop him_.

Hawke traces a thumb across Fenris’s eyebrow, down the jut of his cheekbone, up the line of his pointed ear and breathes a watery, mirthless chuckle when it twitches beneath his fingers. Fenris usually hates his ears being touched but this time he just leans his head into Hawke’s hand and kisses him gently, tensing himself around Hawke’s softening cock, muttering something in Tevene that Hawke doesn’t want to ask about.

Hawke lets Fenris roll him to his back, then. He lets Fenris rock against him until he gets hard inside of him again, he lets Fenris take him in deep, deeper than he could remember ever fitting, his own come slicking him as it leaks down the length of his shaft.

Hawke brings his hands up to cover his face as he whimpers “Why the fuck do I want you so much…” into the cracks between his fingers. His ears are ringing.

Fenris pins his hands to Hawke’s chest when he rides him, fucks onto him with eyes fierce in their longing, strokes growing slower and harder as Hawke's cock stiffens up inside him.

When he gets too close, Hawke quickly sits up and latches his hand to the small curve of Fenris’s shoulder, reaches the other between them to grip hard at Fenris’s dripping tip, fucking him as deep as he can fit while he thrashes through his second orgasm. It takes one pulse of his fist to make Fenris come hard, two to hear his name twist like a ribbon around his throat.

Hawke swiftly tumbles Fenris back onto the rug and tears out of him, bolting in a deafening panic to the bed.

A flash of heat rushes to his eyes and he bites on his clenching fists, drawing his knees up to protect himself from the walls that threaten to close in on him. Somewhere at the end of the whistling in his head, Hawke can hear Fenris put his clothes back on, can hear him as he takes another swig of wine. With torn palms Hawke takes the bottle when it’s offered to him, throws it aside, and grabs fo Fenris’s arm instead.

“Hawke…”

“Please—please come here, please stay, please,” it’s all a chant, a hysterical chant, turbulent and black and quivering, “I’m begging you, Fenris, please…”

Fenris’s eyes drop but he allows himself to be pulled down onto the bed. He mutters more Tevene, sad Tevene, Tevene Hawke doesn’t want to know about, and he takes Hawke’s jaw in his hands and pours it all into him, everything, kissing him until they fall into their own separate versions of dreamless where love and hate are different things.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: depression, anxiety, emotional incontinence

(Present)

Morning paints the room pale blue.

The air is cold, wet with a lingering veil of smoke from the fire that died sometime in the night, and next to Hawke there’s a divot in the pillow to remind him that he hasn’t had a dream in months. He doesn’t turn his head to look.

There’s a quiet shadow of his bookcase stretching across his ceiling, faint, a darker blue, and he watches it with tired eyes while his pulse struggles to dilute the alcohol still in his system. _Luke,_ he tries to say, _Luke, c’mon buddy, c’mere,_ but his mouth stays shut, voice gone before it comes, the bed somehow growing colder in the midst of the dawning light. Somewhere in the house he can hear the scratching of Mabari claws against wooden floors, a low whine by the quarter hall, but the dog doesn’t come upstairs and the door to mother’s room stays closed.

It’s around sunrise when Aveline lets herself into the Hawke Estate and escorts Sir Lucius Puddle through the backdoor, but the sun is obscured by a sheath of clouds and Hawke doesn’t care if it’s even morning anymore.

It takes Aveline a few noisy minutes to get the dog ready for the barracks, and when the front door bolts shut with a _slam_ behind them, Hawke suddenly twists to the edge of the bed and forcefully retches onto the carpet.

 

When Hawke opens his eyes again, the clouds are gone and the room is bright. The shadow on the ceiling is no longer there, but someone’s knocking softly at the front door and Hawke can tell by the uncertainty in the rhythm that it’s Merrill.

_Thump_

She quickly leaves after dropping a crate of leftovers on his doorstep.

Every bone in Hawke’s body feels weighted, every muscle strained, every movement a different kind of pain: searing when he closes his eyes, aching when he lifts his hand, stabbing when he breathes or thinks about anything but the discomfort of his overflowing bladder. He succeeds in fighting nature for a while until it grows painful and even then he doesn’t move, doesn’t even exhale for minutes on end, indolently measuring how long he can go before he feels lightheaded.

Eventually, though, he gets up. He gets up on legs that feel like the rusting hinges to a bear trap and stumbles when he can’t quite remember his footing. He tangles his arms through his robe and barely makes it down to the washroom in time to piss in the chamber pot. On his way back upstairs he pauses at the front door, leans his forehead against its wood, and brings a pale hand up to its handle because he can’t stand to see Merrill’s kindness go to waste. He doesn’t open the door.

His bedroom is bright and his bed sheets are cold, and somewhere in the house he swears he hears footsteps but they turn out to be the beating wings of a moth as it flies hopeless into a window pane. Hawke crawls into himself, into the divot in his pillow and lets his eyelids close once more.

 

Unlike Ferelden where sun showers are common along the coast, Kirkwall gets dark when it rains. The blinds are still mostly closed against the window so Hawke can’t exactly tell whether it’s night yet, he just knows it's raining.

Lucius Puddle is back from the barracks and Hawke can hear him slob down his bowl of water in the kitchen. Again he tries to call him, but when his mouth opens he can only whisper, a cracking waver that churns the bile in his throat and works violently at the dam between him and the ghosts he thought he buried long ago.

Hawke coughs violently before he slowly rolls to his stomach, enveloping a pillow in his arms and sinking into the scent of mulling spices faintly dwelling between the sheets. The room is too hot, then it’s way, way too cold, and distantly Hawke’s aware of the hike in his own temperature by the sheen of sweat collecting on his palms and brow. He shivers as he pulls his quilt higher around his shoulders, and though he can feel his chest writhe and his tears welling high, he doesn’t let himself think a single thought.

 

Hawke gets up to piss and make sure that the dog’s bowls are full of food and water, but he spends the remainder of his time in his bed, watching light as it moves across his walls, idly petting Lucius Puddle with heavy fingers whenever he climbs up next to him.

Every conscious moment comes with its own particular shadow. Eventually Hawke stops looking. Every conscious movement leaves him panting. He stops getting up. He thinks he hears himself tell Bodahn to lock the door, and Bodahn just stares at him with his mouth agape like he wants to say something but he doesn't.

Soon the guilt hits Hawke like a mighty blow to the stomach, making him writhe, gasp, bite wounds through his bottom lip. He wants to thank Bodahn for watching his dog, tell him that Sandal's a good kid, that they don't have to work as hard as they do because they'd always have somewhere to stay.

Tell Aveline she's doing great, he stammers. Tell Varric he's loved. Anders, everything will be okay, and Merrill, dearest poor Merrill –

He hopes her food made it in safely.

The ghosts in the house start to whisper to him through the gaps in the window, “Garrett, be careful,” “Garrett, keep your eye on her,” “vitae benefaria,” and he responds by laughing at them in manic hues because he can't afford to listen to what they say.

Night falls three times before Hawke stops taking note. 

 

Anders and Aveline are the first to come. Loudly. Talking, pounding, snapping his door, hurrying to his bedside, asking him frantic questions. Ripping off his quilt, sitting him up straight.

The whole scene is almost humorous. Hawke's barely conscious through any of it as he sways turbulent in Anders's hold, but he finds his voice like a good boy and says “I'll be fine, I just need to be alone for a little” so clearly that nobody would suspect that he hasn't said a word in days. He even smiles. Malcolm would be proud.

Anders pushes water on him with the promise of leaving once he finishes a pitcher, so Hawke complies, wincing as it trails from the corner of his mouth down to his lap. Its coolness feels foreign in Hawke's parched throat.

When they leave, they tell him that they'll be back. Hawke nods and watches the door trickle shut before he flings himself beneath the pillows that no longer smell like mead, combating hyperventilation with focused yet hysterical breaths until he's able to go to sleep again.

 

The shadows cycle twice before Isabela comes, but she's dead quiet like the rogue she is; Hawke only knows she's there by the bottles she leaves on the floor.

At some point Anders comes back to check his temperature, but by then Hawke is restlessly pacing from wall to wall. His fingers ache from wringing together and his lips feel dry and stretched, like they've been split by wind, working hard around words that he doesn't remember saying.

“When was the last time you'd eaten?” Anders asks, brown eyes stony, all healer, all Grey Warden.

Hawke shrugs like a clear fucking champ. “Last night,” he lies. Anders raises an eyebrow, moving his staff from one hand to the other with a nod of his head.

“And what did you eat?”

“Cheese,” replies Hawke, pausing for effect before adding, “and most of a dinner roll. I haven't been terribly hungry.”

“Really? Bodahn said you haven't left in more than a week,” Anders hunts around for the pouch of vials he'd brought with him, halting at the ashen fireplace where Fenris's lyrium vial hangs like an idol above the bedroom.

“I've been eating late,” Hawke scurries over to the fireplace to detract Anders's attention from anything that would give him a clue, clenching his teeth through a wide smile, “Sandal's usually awake, I'm sure he'd tell you if he could.”

Anders huffs, eyes lingering on the vial that says Hawke's name in childishly bold script before he resolutely picks up his pouch of vials, digging through it until he pulls out a smaller, shapelier bag. “Alright,” he hands Hawke two bunches of carrots and a flask filled with red liquid, “Try eating more than cheese?”

Anders casts Hawke a long, skeptical glance before he turns toward the door, but a sudden overhaul of grief forces Hawke to lunge forward, stopping him mid-step.

“Anders?” he says gruffly, dropping the carrots as he catches Anders's sleeve in a fragile hold. Anders tilts his head to the side, waiting patiently for Hawke to say something else, but it's a very long time before Hawke can think of what he actually wants to tell him. “I-- er--” Hawke stutters, letting go, dropping his gaze in a fit of guilt. “Thank you.”

“You're my friend,” Anders states with a gentle grin, “I'll be by tomorrow.”

Sleep leaves for good that night. Hawke lays face-down on his floor, muttering back to his stomach when it growls for the first time in nine days. _Ha ha, _he thinks, _ahaha, tricked you, I tricked you_. He reaches for the carrots and they're gone before he realizes he's chewing, and when the moon eventually peers uncovered through the window, when he's finally hungry again, Hawke crawls on his hands and knees to the bottle of sailor's swill resting at the foot of his bed.__

__

__Anders keeps his promise. He accompanies Aveline when she arrives at sunrise to pick up Lucius Puddle for a day at the barracks. He comes with strong tea, a bag of cooked grains, more poultice, a comforting smile. Hawke feels guilty when he hides his alcohol and lies about having left his bedroom to take a walk to the docks._ _

__Hawke stays awake for two more nights until he manages to drink himself to sleep one morning. He dreams about throwing snowballs at this nine-year-old brother with a boy named Leto, whose hair is black, whose eyes are a familiar shade of green, whose skin isn't spoiled with magic's touch, whose laugh makes Hawke ask “please, laugh more for me, Maker please.”_ _

__When he wakes, all he can smell is mead._ _

__Hawke leaps from his bed as if it's made of fire and bounds downstairs to his washroom, ignoring Sandal's surprised yelp as he swings open the door, sheds his grimy robe, and tumbles into a bath of ice that he conjures for himself._ _

__The cold leaves him in immobilized for long moments._ _

__He sinks beneath the water, head completely submerged, feeling his nose start to bleed from the shock of temperature; he stays under the surface for as long as he can stand to. His eyes widen and sting at the red ribbons twisting to him like the Amell band at Fenris's wrist._ _

__Hawke emerges yelping nonsense to the air. He scrubs hard at his skin to remove the burned honey he swears he still smells, then drags himself out of the tub, leaving a trail of water as he crawls to the chamber pot and heaves out what little is left in his stomach._ _

__He lays shivering on the floor for a moment while he tries to steady his increasingly erratic breaths. When he feels like he can stand again, he throws on his robe and splashes bathwater onto his face, tasting the faint copper of his blood on his lip. He limps through the door when the bleeding stops, crinkles his eyes at Sandal until the boy cracks in delightfully wanton laughs, grabs a half-finished bottle of whiskey and leaves his house for the first time in nearly a fortnight._ _

__The sea breeze sticks to his skin and whips his damp hair back with every step he takes. Hawke screws his mouth up in a wicked smile, but it wipes clean as soon as he starts to drain the bottle in his hands. He thanks Isabela for the booze and wishes them all the best._ _

__At first he walks in the direction of Lowtown, automatically assuming that the Hanged Man has an empty seat waiting for him at the corner table, but then he remembers, with a pang of regret, how much his friends care about him._ _

__Hawke gets drunk and watches the descending sun from an alley overlooking the docks, ignoring the murmurs of passersby as he leans against some rich prick's floral estate. Kirkwall sunsets have always been so weird to him, especially after spending the majority of his waking life in Lothering where the hues of the sea weren't in constant battle with a purpling sky._ _

__Honestly, Hawke always hated Kirkwall sunsets but he never gave it any thought; it's only when he opens his eyes to peer through the empty whiskey bottle that he notices how green the sea turns in the shadows of twilight._ _

__Hawke feels like he's drowning again. He backs out of the alley with his hands up in a personal surrender, heart beating hot in his cheeks, spinning out into the walkway and almost knocking over a young lady in a light blue hat._ _

__“Pardon, miss,” he gasps, bolting away from the crowd of nobles before someone notices the rapid heaving of his chest or the uncontrollable shaking of his hands._ _

__

__The Chantry doors are always open, and Hawke bolsters through them with little regard to the sisters assembling by the statues of her Highness for a candlelit vigil. He can hear them mumbling amongst themselves, but their voices sound more concerned than judgmental and for that he's silently, distantly thankful._ _

__Hawke collapses onto a pew and immediately throws his arms over his head to block the voices rushing into his ears. They sound like baby Bethany, his mom, the demons down in the Deep Roads that wear his brother's face like a mask. The tears spill hot across his cheeks when “amatus” finally breaks through the surface for the first time in weeks._ _

__This is it. Fenris, like everyone else, is finally gone for good. He can hear him slam the doors of his estate in the small hours of the morning, screaming “I'm never coming back here” on his way out like he'd done before. Twice in eleven months. Hawke's always counting, every night before he falls asleep._ _

__In the midst of a shaking wail, Hawke swears to himself that he will never sleep again._ _

__

__“Well, shit.”_ _

__Two words have never offered Hawke more comfort._ _

__“In dark times mankind scrambles for the light. Any light.”_ _

__Hawke sniffs quietly. He doesn't bother looking up at the person who sits to his left. “Didn't think you were familiar with Genitivi's garbage bin.”_ _

__“Really? I've been using the Tales of Destruction as sanitary cloths for years, might as well read it while I wipe my ass,” Varric's words shine through the comforting smile Hawke knows he has on. “How're you holdin' up?”_ _

__Some Chantry sisters bustle down the aisle with the word “Champion” buzzing quietly from their covered faces. Hawke snorts and curls his lips into a sardonic grin, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “I can't go anywhere without someone listing my portfolio of achievements,” he responds, chuckling wetly, sharply._ _

__“Perks of being rich and famous,” Varric agrees, “it's gotta be Hightown. _Nobody_ cares about you in the Alienage. Except that one mage's mother. Even then, Merrill told me that she overheard her telling the pie merchant that your beard looks fucking stupid and unflattering.”_ _

__Varric always knew how to make him laugh, and Hawke fills with appreciation for the dwarf as he tries to figure out how to stop his chest from tightening every time he grins. He cackles heartily into his fists._ _

__By the time Hawke looks up again, his laughter has receded to violent, harrowing sobs. Varric watches him with unwavering concern for a second before crossing his arms over his chest. “Wrong time to ask, but what the hell happened with Broody?”_ _

__“Who?” Hawke claws the tears off his face with a snarl. “Ahhh, he—it doesn't matter—”_ _

__“Are you sure?”_ _

__Hawke nods, wincing into his fingertips, trying to straighten his frown or calm his breathing or stop his fucking chest from feeling so heavy. He swallows thickly, sits up straight for a second before caving into himself again, protectively folding his arms across his stomach as he slowly doubles over._ _

__“Fuck,” he cries, his hysterical voice rough with anger and defeat, “ _fuck_... He's got this idea in his head that—I don't th—”_ _

__Hawke forcefully tears his fingers away from each other before they break themselves apart, “A-and I can't change. I can't. I've tried,” he angrily shakes the flames that unconsciously form in his palms. When the embers flicker lifeless to the ground, he bows his head until his forehead hits the pew in front of him and wrings hard through the frays of his robe._ _

__“I know how sad this gets, Hawke.”_ _

__Hawke's sobs echo off the Chantry walls and shake the stained glass around them. He mutters a few more words about how he should have known, confusing emotions and chronological events, confusing his hatred for remorse, his family for his lover, letting his guilt drag him like an anchor through dark waters while he works through fucked up narratives and faulty prayers._ _

__Varric listens to all of it. He nods when he can, but he stays quiet to let Hawke get it out while he's still drunk enough to talk about it._ _

__When Hawke frantically says, “he's known, from the second I saw him, he's known that I'd love the shit out of him for...” Varric quietly places a hand on his shoulder to stop him from falling any further._ _

__“Hey,” he starts, carefully. “Want to hear a story?”_ _

__After a moment of deep breaths, Hawke nods into his calloused palms and brings his feet up onto the pew, turning his head to watch the profile of his best friend’s face as he tells him how Bianca got her name._ _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I GOT DRUNK WHILE EDITING THE LAST TWO CHAPTERS SO THERE MIGHT BE SOME POST-MORTEM REGRETS. All done!

(10 Bloomingtide, 9:34 Dragon)

 

“Nooo! You _bastard_!”

Isabela waved her hands above her head as she stood over the table, her eyes scanning fretfully over the cards spread face-up next to Hawke’s hand. “No, no no nononono! I had a flush! A FLUSH!”

“Ahaha, you sure did!”

There was a group groan as Hawke toasted himself for the third victory of the night and raked the pot into his four-of-a-kind corner. Against him Fenris was losing a duel with sleep, so Hawke lowered his voice to ask Varric whether he needed help paying for his room this month, which earned him two pissed Dwarven birds from across the table.

Hawke smirked and rationed out half of his winnings to leave as a tip for the barmaid. With Aveline uninterested, Merrill ill, and Anders entirely too busy to join, the pot was barely enough to pick up the tab, so Hawke fished out his coin pouch and piled a few sovereigns onto the table while waving a hand at Varric’s protest.

“Oh, let him do it,” cheered Isabela, grinning, giving Hawke the same look she gave when she offered to spend the night every week.

As it turned out, Isabela owed quite a bit of gold to the tavern. So much gold, in fact, that Hawke was sure that they’d all have to go into servitude to pay it off by the end of the month so she wouldn’t be cast out to the street and left to die. Isabela found it particularly funny and blew him a kiss from across the table, eyes landing warmly on the elf whose forehead was nestled sweetly into Hawke’s arm.

“Aww,” she breathed, quirking her eyebrows up like she just saw a puppy chasing a butterfly, “that’s cute.”

“Adorable,” Hawke conceded through a stupidly lovesick grin. That was the best part about drinking with Isabela and Varric: neither of them threatened to save him from anything, nor did they care about truths because they were both so intent on writing their own narratives for other peoples’ silence.

Varric ordered another pitcher, pouring himself a glass as he told the story about how Bartrand blamed him for the accidental incineration of their mother’s favorite blouse.

“And then he climbs to the roof and calls our dad a hairy twat, and chucks the bottle straight onto the poor guy's broken nose!”

Varric waited until the cackling of the table subsided before he set his mug down and tilted his chin toward Fenris. “He gonna be alright?” he aked Hawke.

Hawke carefully bowed his head until he was able to nudge Fenris’s ear with his nose. He could feel a sleepy smile crawl across Fenris’s face at the contact, so he lingered for a second at his temple, a protective chill running down his spine at the way Fenris slowly knotted his hands into the hem of his shirt.

“Hey,” Hawke whispered, lips barely brushing a strip of snowy hair.

“Hi,” the elf whispered back. His breath was warm on Hawke’s bicep.

A small grin tugged at the corner of Hawke’s mouth as Fenris’s eyelashes slowly tickled his skin. After a second he raised his head up and glanced at Varric with a quick nod, mouthing “he’s good” and taking a sip from his mug.

 

The three of them chatted in hushed voices for a little longer, Isabela occasionally covering her face at the sight of drunk Fenris nuzzling into Hawke’s muscles. “How does he sit like that?” she asked through her smile and her fingers, her other hand motioning diagonally in the air to mimic Fenris’s intoxicated posture.

Hawke snorted. Fenris always had some weirdly ingrained sense of balance, which was great because his tiny frame felt unusually heavy against Hawke and would have toppled to the floor without it. “Probably an elf thing,” Hawke said lowly, adjusting his arm slightly to straighten Fenris’s neck.

“Mm. _Definitely_ an elf thing.”

At one point Varric reached over to collect their cards and found that Fenris, had he been coherent, would have actually won their last game without having to trade a single hand. Hawke had to bite his fist to keep from laughing out loud when Isabela cried “but I had a _flush!_ ”, to which Fenris mumbled something about rotting brandy and the peaceful stillness of a Tevinter cemetery.

Shortly after Isabela ran off with an old flame and Varric retreated to his room with one last skeptical glance at Fenris, the barkeep rang the bell for last call. Hawke drained his mug and gazed down at his elf’s slouching shoulders, awestruck at his smallness, at his sword, at the stunning amount of calmness he felt just by being in the same room.

The bell rang again.

“Fenris,” he cooed, stomach turning in remorse of having to rouse him, “c’mon, bar’s about to shut.”

Hawke idly brought his hand through Fenris’s hair, fingers splayed and coiling in small circles on the side of his head. When Fenris began to stir again, Hawke used the opportunity to slowly remove his arm and straighten up, holding his hand against Fenris’s shoulder to steady him.

”Mmmf,” groaned Fenris. He instantly collapsed forward onto the table, cuddling into his own arms with a contented sigh. “Wantanotherdrink.”

Hawke rolled his eyes as he swung his staff and Fenris’s heavy-ass sword over his shoulder. “I’ve a flask. Let’s at least leave so Corff doesn’t hang us.”

“Ahahaha! The _Hanged Man_!”

“Yeees,” Hawke chuckled, beaming down at the delirious rarity before him while he struggled to maintain a balance beneath the weight of two weapons. Andraste’s tits, Fenris weighed less than his sword. How he managed to swing it without flying after its hilt was beyond him. “Mind if I walk you home?”

 

When they made it out to the blistering humidity of Lowtown, Fenris hoisted a leg onto an empty barrel and stretched forward until he was able to wrap his hands around the sole of his foot. He swayed to the side and giggled before he did the same with his other leg, then bounced on the balls of his feet, sipping from the flask of moonshine that Hawke handed to him as he stretched.

Hawke made a show of rolling his eyes while he waited, but he was grinning, laughing. Isabela's way of describing shit was remarkable. Cute. Fenris was _cute_. As Hawke frantically lunged forward to catch the flask before it toppled out of Fenris's drunken hold, Hawke supposed that she was right.

They walked in silence, passing the moonshine between them. Fenris was the first to speak, though half his words were muffled by a mouthful of alcohol.

“You’re a… you’re very attractive, Hawke,”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re really attractive, Hawke. You’re a really handsome man,” Fenris took the flask back, slowly dragging his fingers over Hawke’s with a cheeky grin, “Who d’you share your bed with now?”

Hawke recoiled sharply and sped up his pace. “I don’t,” he called, “can you stand?”

“You do. But you _do_.”

“Yep, I really don’t.”

Fenris made a noise eerily reminiscent of Lucius Puddle and took another drink, coughing wetly as he said, “No, but listen. LISTEN, What about the pirate?”

“Isabela? Nah,” Hawke said, taking the flask back and draining the rest in one, long, burning gulp.

“Pfffnah? Why not?”

Hawke held up a finger as he coughed, his face beating red, brain reeling from the amount of stupidity required to drink half a flask of moonshine in under four seconds. “Not my type,” he drawled, adjusting Fenris's sword so the blade stopped tearing into the side of his robes as he walked.

“Is Aaan—hic—ders your type?”

“What? No.”

“The Dalish!”

Hawke sighed, pausing to let Fenris catch up. “More than Anders. What’re you on about?”

“Your brother though,” Fenris stumbled laughing into a tree, “your brother though, listen to me, no, okay no listen, HE SAID YOU—”

Hawke winced at the sudden volume of Fenris’s voice and reached to guide him out of the bushes. “Shhh, Fenris,” he whispered, “c’mere.”

“Huh? Nn, sorry.” Fenris rubbed his eyes blearily and dropped his voice to a forceful whisper, leaning into Hawke's side with a muted mewl, making him work to keep his balance, “your brother said you slept with _people_...”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Hawke cringed through a smile, curling his hold into the fabric at the base of Fenris's neck. “I didn’t sleep with many. You sure you’re alright?” 

“M’fine.” said Fenris, belligerently brushing Hawke’s hand right off his shoulder and marching ahead. After a moment he spun around on his heels and called out, “You slept with me!”

“Let’s not talk about this,” Hawke groaned as he ran up to where Fenris stood with his arms half-raised in confusion. The elf snatched the flask from his hands but Hawke shook his head and stated “it is so incredibly empty” before he had the chance to open it.  
“Oh, it's fffffine, not like I wanted more of it,” Fenris retorted. He looked like he was about to chuck the flask against somebody's house, so Hawke quickly took it back and stuffed it in one of his hidden pockets.

They walked side by side for a while before Fenris spoke up again, but when he spoke, Hawke got the creeping sense of a climate change in his demeanor. “Did you hate it?” He asked lowly. Hawke furrowed his eyebrows at the question.

“No. Wait, hate what?”

“Sleeping with me.”

“No, I—shit, a storm’s coming in, we’d better hurry it up.” Once again, Hawke sped up his pace as they headed up toward the lightning-lit buildings of Hightown. 

Behind him Fenris yelled, “I didn’t hate it!”

The statement was so fucking unbelievable that Hawke instantly barked a laugh. “I can tell by the way you leapt right out of my bed” he ran a strong hand through his hair and nervously looked up at clouds gathering overhead as he climbed to the top of a flight of stairs, “and refused to speak to me for a month after.”

He almost skidded to the ground when Fenris crooked his fingers into the sleeve of his robe and yanked him backwards.

“No! It’s because of your—hic—you have fiery hands!”

“Oh Maker’s _breath_ , did you really have that much to drink?”

“Garrett! You have fire in your _hands_. Are you listening?” Fenris frantically tugged at his sleeve. His eyes were wide and slightly shiny in the street light. “Listen! No really Hawke, listen. Garrett! Garrett.”

The corners of Hawke’s mouth quirked in anger as Fenris began to shake him with enough force to throw him off balance. He tilted his shoulders to keep his staff from shattering to the ground.

“Stop that,” Hawke bit, trying to free himself from the elf's delirious grip but Fenris clasped on harder. “Let go of me. You’re fucking _lit_ , it's going to pour soon and I—”

Hawke was about to keep arguing, but the words vanished in his throat when Fenris laced his fingers around his palm and quietly said, “but it burns.”

It came out so small that Hawke wasn't sure if he heard right, but Fenris's head fell against his chest while his small torn fingers pawed down the front of his robe, landing in an unassuming rest at his leather belt. Hawke felt Fenris's breathing vacillate through his armor and exhaled into his snowy hair, sliding a faltering hand up his waist and pulling him in to a cautious embrace.

“Okay. I’m sorry,” he said, but Fenris moved like he was about to fight with him again, so he kissed his forehead, tightened his hold, and repeated, “I’m really sorry for it. I am. Believe me when—shh, listen—it's my turn, okay? Believe me when I say that I want nothing more than to make that stop.”

Fenris grew quiet in his arms, still like a winter creek save for the hands he was brushing up and down the expanse of Hawke's torso. Hawke gathered him closer and pressed his lips to his temple. Fenris's shoulders slouched as he drew a shaking breath against Hawke's chest, but Hawke continued before he got the chance to speak: “I'd give the world to change what happened to you. But we both know that I can't, and neither can you.”

Hawke shook his head when Fenris tried to kiss him. He let go of the elf, feeling suddenly drained, and found himself wishing that he'd saved at least a shot of that moonshine.

He tugged Fenris by the arm and walked toward his mansion. The sword felt heavier than ever on his back.

“Did you love the people in your bed?” Fenris was still so fucking drunk. Hawke rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palms as thunder rolled through the alleys with the wind.

“There hasn’t been anyone in my bed.”

“I was in your bed once.”

“Please, Fenris.”

“I was.”

“You were,” Hawke snapped. He looked up at the blackened sky and thought it looked a lot like ashes. “You don’t want to talk about this when you’re sober, so let’s not talk about this now.” He felt like a fucking dog just saying that, but Fenris quickly leapt onto him, grabbing him by the back of his neck until he caught Hawke's bottom lip between his teeth.

Hawke immediately lifted him up against him and fell back against Fenris's front door, his fists pulsing at the curve of Fenris's ass while he whimpered against the taste of four different alcohols.

Fenris always won.

“Did you love them?” Fenris's repeated when he pulled away. His voice was clear as the tide and it came in time with a rumble of thunder. He stoop up, pulled Hawke up to his feet and took his sword off his shoulders, glaring at him with more sobriety than he'd shown all night.

The ashen clouds swirled above them and Hawke glared into the dark green hues that have long since burned themselves into his memory. He tore his gaze away, glanced down in time to catch the sight of the first raindrop as it crashed to the fervent ground.

“N-no,” he rasped, looking over his shoulder, looking up as more raindrops started to fall. “I never loved like you.”


End file.
